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Category: unwelcome visitor

Well. We hung around Maryland for a couple of weeks. While Tumbleweed and Jo were visiting and seeing the sights, we enjoyed playing in the RV. It was nice having the slider out. Some of us would run from the back of the RV up to the front end of the couch, jump up on the couch and then climb right up the wall where there was some material covering part of it. We could grab hold for a bit and then fall back to the couch. We had a great time while the humans were out.

Sometimes they took the dogs with them and it was really CAT TIME in the RV!

Then, we pulled everything in and brought the slider back into position. Time to move on! They mentioned Durham, North Carolina…I checked out the map. It was quite a drive. We went far enough West to avoid the traffic around Washington, DC.

We had a hard time finding Birchwood RV Park because it was actually inside Durham. It was near several hospitals, medical centers and Duke University. Many of the people in the park were patients waiting for or recovering from surgery especially for implants. The dogs told us about some of the people they met when out walking.

One day they came back excited because they met a chocolate lab that belonged to a man who lived and worked in the park. He was actually a sculptor originally from Columbus, Ohio. His little house was in the woods and I heard Tumbleweed and Jo talking about the wood and stone carvings that he had in his yard. The Lab was called Rocky and Harley (that’s the man’s name) thought it was a good joke that he had carved a statue of Rocky out of stone (instead of wood).

We were there for Thanksgiving and Tumbleweeds relatives went on to Florida to be with their family for Thanksgiving. Harley accepted an invitation to go to Cracker Barrel with Tumbleweed and Jo for turkey dinner. They came back smiling so I assume they had a good time.

Well, when we were ready to leave the park, Harley brought Rocky over to say goodbye. I think he had had a couple beers before coming to see us. He brought Rocky right into the RV and sat down to talk. We – both cats and dogs- went to the back room for safety. He was really big…even our dogs were too small to take him on … even though Peanut (our Chihuahua) challenged him a little. But she stopped when Jelly didn’t join in with the barking.

Butter who is the craziest cat that I have ever known kept running out and challenging Rocky to play with him, and then when Rocky reached out his big paw, Butter would run to the back room. But before long he would come right back out again.

Harley finally was beginning to nod from his earlier drinks and he left taking Rocky home with him. A little later, there was a scratching at the door. Rocky wasn’t finished visiting. Tumbleweed opened the window and told him to “Go back home”. He left. But a little while later he was scratching at the door again. Same routine! “Rocky, go home!” After this happened several times, Harley came and got him and must have taken him inside because we never saw him again that night.

Our test drive in the summer of 2005 was a trip to Ohio where Tumbleweed’s family grew up. Sun Valley Camp Ground was about 3 miles from her sister’s home.The park was combined with a mobile home park and surrounded by farmland.

The cats in the back room were making a big fuss. Tumbleweed sent me back there to straighten things out. Well, the problem was that a large yellow cat had decided that things looked better where we were than on his farm. He was trying to climb aboard. I first settled down the cats inside who were arguing the issue. Then I hissed at the cat outside and suggested nicely that he should go home.

Tumbleweed had continued working on her computer which was set up on the dash of the RV. Butter and Bandit started fussing behind the curtain that was closed over the front window whenever we were parked. They kept pushing against the computer as they tussled behind the curtain.. When she finally stopped typing and pulled back the curtain, there was that big yellow cat sitting on the outside mirror and looking right in at her.

She told him, “We are all filled up! We don’t have any more room. You better go on home.” I think she figured that seven cats and two dogs were a full bus load! I felt sorry for the poor guy as he walked away toward the nearest farm. We didn’t see him again.